SOAS Research Online

Abstract

Anthropological studies of forced displacement are increasingly attending to the structural and affective aspects of temporal arrangements. It seems that, as the Bosnian poet Mak Dizdar once wrote, ‘it’s time to think about time’. In this talk, I am particularly concerned with spatio-temporal fractures and continuities in the lives of post-war returnees to the Dinaric highlands of south-eastern Bosnia. Based on long-term fieldwork, I trace their attempts to restore a disrupted sacred calendar of syncretic feasts signalled by the shared (Muslim-Christian) figure of St Elijah. Unfitting to the nationalist projects of ethno-religious cleansing, these temporal orientations also have significant political connotations. I begin by suggesting that time appears in discreet relations from which people and entire landscapes can be distemporalised and ask what happens when different spatio-temporal orders meet (in the same body or landscape). I also explore how qualitatively different kinds of waiting merge in a post-conflict context to ensure the persistence of returnees’ orientation towards the homely.